Babbit eBook

This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets
of the Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch
that ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the card
board, and twist the pupils to the PDQest show ever.
You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest.
The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will
give you a run for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen
is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of
real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson
and West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under
the wire. Provin and Adams will blow the blues
in their laugh skit “Hootch Mon!” Something
doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters.

“Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let’s
all take it in,” said Babbitt.

But they put off departure as long as they could.
They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed
under the table, but they felt unsteady; they were
afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of
the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and
the too-attentive waiters.

When they did venture, tables got in their way, and
they sought to cover embarrassment by heavy jocularity
at the coatroom. As the girl handed out their
hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool
and expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen.
They croaked at one another, “Who owns the bum
lid?” and “You take a good one, George;
I’ll take what’s left,” and to the
check-girl they stammered, “Better come along,
sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!”
All of them tried to tip her, urging one another,
“No! Wait! Here! I got it right
here!” Among them, they gave her three dollars.

XI

Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the
burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a
chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and inextinguishably
respectable grandams swung their legs in the more
elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian
made vicious fun of Jews. In the entr’actes
they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them
went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the
blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned along
a room low and stinking, like a cow-stable no longer
wisely used.

Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two
or three clerks, who on pay-day longed to be taken
for millionaires, sheepishly danced with telephone-girls
and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the
tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals,
a young man in sleek evening-clothes and a slim mad
girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as
jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with
her. He shuffled along the floor, too bulky to
be guided, his steps unrelated to the rhythm of the
jungle music, and in his staggering he would have
fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength.
He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol;
he could not see the tables, the faces. But he
was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.